


sea of sand

by evilblubber



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Casual Mention of Murder, Child Soldiers, Creepy, Han Solo did Not Sign Up For This Shit, Hux is Worse, Hux's name is Brendol, Kylo Ren is Creepy, Leia Organa Deserves Better, Love at First Sight, Multi, No I didn't Misspell That You Misspelled That, Pens and Other Writing Implements are Illegal, Phasma and Hux are Coffee Buddies, Poe Dameron Hijacks The Government, Poo Dameron, Random Stormtrooper Cameo, Rey Has No Face, Scientist Hux, Scourge of The Order, Sneaky Kylo, The Supreme Leader is Watching, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, Voice Kylo Ren, Welcome to Nightvale AU, because i started this before the Armiegeddon, i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-21 08:02:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6044151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilblubber/pseuds/evilblubber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>“There is very little we can do to fill the blank, empty void in our lives,"</em> crooned the voice on the radio, when the music faded away. <em>"And, ultimately, there is nothing we can do to stop that void from consuming us entirely.”</em></p><p>“What the fuck,” Hux muttered, and tried turning it off.</p><p><em>“Welcome,”</em> the voice murmured, low and rich and sweet, <em>“to the First Order.”</em></p><p> </p><p>(Or, the Kylux Nightvale AU no one asked for)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "I Think I'm in Love"

**Author's Note:**

> It is one am and I have no life.
> 
> I plan on fleshing out this AU a bit more, so there are two more chapters oncoming, I just NEEDED to write this out today or it would've eaten me alive.
> 
> Oh, and hit me up at evilblubber.tumblr.com if you like.

x

 

Go into the tiny, inexplicable desert town, they said. It’ll be easy, they said.

(No one has ever come back, they never said. People have been disappearing in there for ages, they never said.)

Just contact us every month to let us know you’re alive, they said.

( _You’ll never get out,_ they never said.)

 

* * *

 

 

i

 

Hux had just driven into the little town, nearly giddy with relief that he can finally see something besides a near-endless stretch of sand and dunes and blue sky, when the radio crackled to life. He blinked, alarmed, when the damn thing sputtered out a few noises, before settling on soothing music that did very little to actually soothe him. He reached for the knob, turned it, and found that it did nothing.

“ _There is very little we can do to fill the blank, empty void in our lives_ ,” crooned the voice on the radio, when the music faded away. “ _And, ultimately, there is nothing we can do to stop that void from consuming us entirely_.”

“What the _fuck,”_ Hux muttered, and tried turning it off.

“ _Welcome,”_ the voice murmured, low and rich and sweet, “ _to the First Order._ ”

 

* * *

 

Hux, freaked out beyond belief, drove into town while listening to that guy on the radio talk about mandatory government brainwashing, and something about a Bantha Park that doesn’t allow banthas, whatever they are. Or dogs. Or people. Or anyone.

He was, of course, entirely convinced that this was some kind of prank. Creative, he supposed, as the man brightly related safety tips for parents who want to take their children out to play in the scrublands—keeping them hydrated, ensure there’s shade, and something about keeping an eye on helicopter colors.

(“ _Sand,”_ the man said, darkly, “W _e are surrounded by miles, and miles of endless_ sand. _A sea of sand, threatening to devour out little town whole, leaving nothing but the vague ghosts of our tiny, meaningless lives behind. The stuff’s disgusting, really. Gets in your hair, it’s dusty and it’s just_ awful _when it gets in your shoes. Eugh.”_ )

What really _got_ Hux was not the matter-of-fact tone informing him that the black helicopters that hovered in his periphery meant World Government, that blue meant the Captain’s Secret Stormtoopers and that helicopters with murals depicting birds of prey were unknown and that he should go home, lock his doors and block out the screams. It wasn’t even some guy claiming to have something called a Force Ghost change his lightbulb, and was now selling it.

(“ _It was the black one,” s_ aid the man on the radio, “ _if that sweetens the pot for anyone.”)_

No, it was; “ _A new man came into town today.”_ Which would not have been entirely strange, even if it was followed up by, “ _Who is he? What does he want from us? Why his perfect and beautiful haircut?”_

Because that couldn’t be him, right? That would—that would be ridiculous.

And “ _He says he is a scientist,”_ could have been a coincidence, too.

But when the man lowly informed his listeners of the location of the lab he’d rented out, which he was just pulling up to, Hux felt his blood run cold.

“ _—Next to Maz’s Bar,”_ the man said, _“No one does a drink like Maz._ No one. _”_

* * *

He did not sign up for this—well, he did. But he’d come here to investigate the nearly inexplicable phenomena occurring in the First Order, not deal with, with—

“ _And he has hair the color of a forest fire, tamed into a perfect military cut, and eyes like frozen blue steel, and the slightest dusting of freckles over his nose and cheeks,”_ the man on the radio sighed dreamily, as Hux gaped. “ _And everything about him is frighteningly, devastatingly perfect.”_

“What the fuck,” he mutters, and could not stop listening, could not look away from the car radio. He was frozen with half his torso in the car, fingers stiffly gripping the box he’d been reaching for when he’d caught this tidbit.

_“I want to set him aflame, aflame like his hair. I want to see that pale skin bleed endlessly into the dry desert sand. I want to see him laugh, with blood staining his perfect, even teeth, as he slaughters anything in his path.”_

Hux shivered.

“ _Oh, listeners,”_ the man whispered, low and lovely and terrifying, “ _I think I’m in love._ ”

That’s how it began. There was no escape after that.

 

* * *

 

 

 

ii

 

 

His name was Kylo Ren.

He had wide, dark brown eyes and a mop of thick, unruly curls, and pale skin scattered with little moles and freckles and plump lips that pulled into a wide, lopsided grin whenever Hux came by. He was tall and awkwardly lanky, and always wore thick, black clothes, and a black scarf around his neck, despite the ever-present desert sun.

The first time Hux met him ( _really_ met him, not just listened to his low murmurs from the radio), it was because the radio station appeared to be utterly impossible. But, after a _house that doesn’t exist_ and earthquakes that didn’t happen when they should have, he should not have been surprised.

(It’s _wrong._ Everything about the town is _wrong._ Even the fucking sun sets at the wrong time.)

Nonetheless, the fact is this: the little, unassuming radio station had _insane_ amounts of radiation. As in, Hux rather fancied that this is what _Chernobyl_ would have looked like, once upon a time.

And there stood the unconcerned Kylo Ren, looking at him placidly, the various personnel milling about the station as calm and mildly content as he.

Hux, by contrast, had to be having s _everal heart attacks at once._

Because his readings were going in _sane,_ and he was gaping at it, and then at the smiling man with the ridiculous scarf, and then back down that the thing telling him that they should all be dead.

“What the—you need to,” Hux sputtered, which is the second sentence he’d ever spoken to Kylo, after _Hi, I’m Hux, the scientist? Mind if I look around?_ “You need to evacuate the building! None of us should be alive!”

Kylo’s smile grew wider. “Why, Brendol,” he said, brightly, “I never took you for an existentialist! Though, I do agree, our existence is likely a mere accident of fate—a cosmic glitch, as it were.”

(Hux didn’t even ask how he knew his first name.)

Hux was so thrown by that, that he stopped his mental panic-attack and stared blankly at Kylo. “Are you _kidding_ me?”

“I think Captain Phasma announced yesterday that kidding has, in fact, been outlawed and punishable by mindwiping,” Kylo replied.

 

* * *

 

Hux fell in love in a manner that was almost resigned. He didn’t have a choice, really.

(Because who could have _that,_ those wide dark eyes and lopsided grin and too-large ears and whispers of the void and general idiocy, thrown at them and _not fall in love?_ )

 

* * *

 

 

iii

 

 

“Kylo,” Hux said, blankly. He’s been trying to get his attention for—he glances at his watch, which is frozen with its hands showing 5:30, with only the second-hand tick-tick-ticking on, as it has been for the past week—about a full minute.

“—and I get it! You’re calling for Science,” he says, and Hux is, as usual, equal parts amused and utterly exasperated at the capital _S_ he can just _sense,_ “And I’ll be professional this time!”

“Kylo,” says Hux again.

“And I promise not to stab any more Stormtroopers, Phasma says she’s running low anyway, and I promise I won’t impede your scientific investigation!”

_“Kylo,”_ says Hux, a bit louder.

Kylo stops talking. _Finally._

“I’m calling for _personal reasons,_ ” he says, smoothly. Or, as smoothly as he can when he’s actually a screaming mess.

 

(“Great job!” says JB-007, the Stormtooper assigned to monitoring his phone line, after Kylo hangs up. “I mean, we all saw this coming—and if you didn’t do it yourself, I’m pretty sure Snoke would’ve ordered us to brainwash you into doing it, but great job!”

“Thanks,” Hux says drily, and hangs up.)

 

* * *

 

 

_“Well, it’s that day again, everyone!”_ Kylo says cheerfully, on the radio. _“Recruitment day!”_

Hux is sitting in front of a laptop, fingers poised over the keys.

This is the thing: he’s been ignoring them for months now—he hasn’t had the, the _inclination_ to report back. He has given them no findings, no updates, no _hello, I’m alive_ messages or anything in at least three months.

(“Time is immaterial,” Kylo said once, “But I think Snoke wants us to think that so that we don’t know about his weird love affair with Time.”

Hux still doesn’t know whether that was literal or not.)

“ _And remember! All children below age three need to be tagged, so that the assigned Troopers can evaluate them according to their physical and mental development and take them from their homes to be trained as mindless drones with numbers instead of names, to serve under our glorious Supreme Leader—who does not bribe me with shiny things to call him that on air,”_ the radio says, blithely. Hux groans and rolls his eyes. He does _not_ want Kylo to be re-educated again this week.

At least, not today. They have a date planned today.

 

(“He only gets away with this shit,” said the woman in chrome armour who somehow became his coffee buddy, “because he’s Snoke’s favourite.”

“Why is he Snoke’s favourite?” he asked, handing Phasma the steaming cup of regulated and Supreme-Leader-Approved coffee.

“We aren’t allowed to remember that,” she said, promptly.)

(“Snoke,” said Hux, slowly, during those first weeks when he thought all of this was weird and was in a constant state of panic, “is that like the Mayor?”

“He’s our glorious Supreme Leader,” Kylo informed him, fiddling with the frayed sleeve of the oversized black sweater that was somehow not cooking him alive, “and he’s kind of like an Emperor.”

“…of a small town.”

“Mmhm.”)

 

And he stares at the screen, and thinks.

Because if he doesn’t report back, _he still can,_ he’d be announced dead. They’d move on. Maybe they’d send someone else, but Phasma would deal with it.

He _could_ report back. Kylo wouldn’t mind, except that it would be a sort of betrayal.

“ _And they will serve, nameless and autonomous, reduced to something barely human, all in the name of the Order. They will be a part of our ever-growing army, which we will one day unleash on the unsuspecting outside world that Brendol assures me is real,”_ Kylo breathes, _“So, tag your children, listeners. And comfort yourselves with the thought that they will not remember you. They will not miss you. They will be incapable of missing you, as they will be forbidden from emotion.”_

He _should_ report back. He taps the touchpad of the laptop idly. This whole _child soldier_ business might interest them. And the whole time-stopping thing. And the librarian thing. Actually, a lot of things would interest them.

He shuts the laptop.

He has a date to get ready for.

 

* * *

 

 

**BONUS:**

“Oh, thank fuck,” says DL-9834, leaning against the wall in relief. “That could’ve got ugly, fast.”

Beside her, HG-7541 nods fervently. “Yeah! Ren would’ve _lost it_ if we shot him!”

“Or re-educated,” DL-9834 reminds them, “it was _bloody murder_ or _thorough re-education._ ”

HG-7541 shrugs and shakes their head, “I dunno, man, it’s _weird_ when they let us make choices.”

“Eh, I heard you get used to it. Hey, wanna spy on their date? You know cautionary surveillance,” says DL-9834.

“ _Not so fast,”_ a voice crackles in both their earpieces. “ _That was creativity and independent thought. Head over to re-education effective immediately.”_

“Aw, boo,” says HG-7541.

 

 


	2. A Story About You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You are healthy, and aged twenty-three years and eight months, and you have been given a serial number—the same one you have had since the equally nameless and faceless Troopers ripped you from whatever home you originated from._
> 
> _You are FN-2187. And this is a story about you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SORRY THAT THIS IS SO LATE BUT I HAVE BEEN SO FUCKIN BUSY YOU HAVE NO IDEA also i had a small existential crisis and my exam results came in and they were terrible and this is terrible and you don't care sorry I'll just get to the actual fic now.

_This is a story about you, says the man on the radio. And you are confused, because you are not allowed to listen to the radio, and you suspect that this is all in your head._

_You suspect that you have gone mad._

_You suspect._

_You think._

_This is a problem. You should go to your supervising officer and have that checked out. Thinking is dangerous._

_Welcome to the First Order,_ says Kylo, grinning in the manner of a man very aware of what he is about to do.

_You were raised to obey._

_You remember nothing but this, nothing but cold voices telling you what to do, what not to do. You are not allowed to think, and you are not allowed to remember much. You are cold, cold on the inside because all you have ever known is servitude._

_For what, you do not know. For what, you cannot care. After all, you cannot think._

_You are healthy, and aged twenty-three years and eight months, and you have been given a serial number—the same one you have had since the equally nameless and faceless Troopers ripped you from whatever home you originated from._

_You are FN-2187. And this is a story about you._

_  
_

* * *

“What the fuck,” says Phasma, staring blankly at the radio, “is your boyfriend _doing?_ ”

Hux, who had been trying to get his reports in order, scribbling with a pen that Phasma had smuggled in, covered his face with his hand. “Oh _no,_ tell me he won’t get re-educated for this.”

Phasma levels him with a Look. “What do _you_ think?”

 

* * *

 

_You are cold and empty and you do not know it, says the man on the radio. You only hear it because you are on guard outside your squadron-leader’s office, and they had smuggled in a radio three weeks ago. You listen to it because you do not have anything else to do, besides listen to the vague echo of thoughts in your mind._

_You cannot think too much. Creative thought is a punishable offence._

_But, recently, you have been thinking—very recently, in fact. There was a raid three days ago, you barely remember what it was—they’re all the same, after all, and you are not accustomed to remembering or thinking._

_But you have been thinking, because there was a raid, and someone died._

_This happens all the time. People die. You have killed, and you have watched people be killed. It does not matter, because all you are is a cog in one glorious machine._

_But a fellow cog—a good cog, a cog that did not think overmuch and only did cogly things—died on that raid. This is not new. Fellow cogs have died before._

_But this is different, because it jarred you from unthinking servitude in the name of a cause you are not allowed to fully comprehend, for a cause that has stripped you of who you are and who you may have become. A thoughtless machine striving towards bloody glory, uncaring of whatever must be rooted out or reconditioned or killed to attain that glory._

_And so you think._

_  
_

_  
_

* * *

As Kylo speaks on the radio, Hux and Phasma stare at each other, jaws slack. There is some of the dazed vagueness that comes of listening to Kylo speak on the radio, but most of it is sheer shock and terror.

“Jesus _wept,_ ” spits Hux.

“We need to do something,” says Phasma, getting to her feet. She moves to get out of the house, into the cold desert night outside, pale eyes wide. “If he keeps this up, I’ll have to do something more drastic than re-education.”

(Hux shudders, because he thinks of Kylo glassy-eyed and non-responsive in his arms, face pale and speckled with blood, as a faceless Trooper recites the usual warnings that they give after they rip his mind apart.)

Hux huffs out a sigh and walks after her. “What the hell is he _doing?_ ”

 

* * *

 

_You stand at your station, armored and armed and unmoving and ceaselessly thinking. You don’t know what you are thinking; your mind is a maelstrom of something you do not understand, and you are very aware of the blood still smeared on your helmet._

_You hear noises._

_Immediately, someone turns the radio down, and three fellow cogs march by, roughly handling a man. They march forward with even steps that they likely do not know to escape from, and it is odd next to the uneven stumble of the man they are dragging._

_He is wearing an orange jacket, this man. And has wide dark eyes and a rough smile that does not waver despite his obviously injured arm—it hangs limply at his side. He has luscious hair, dark and lovely and curled and perfect and you fall in love instant—_

_No, you don’t. You cannot. You don’t know what love is, or even lust. And you have a moral crisis to deal with._

_My bad, says the man on the radio. I got carried away in the moment._

_He is marched away, and you follow his exit with your eyes. “Who was that?” you ask your squardron-leader, who pokes their head out of the office’s doorway and asks if the coast is clear._

_“Someone from the Outside,” says your squadron-leader, “someone that They sent.”_

_They are a Vague Yet Menacing Government Agency that has been plotting the downfall of the First Order for as long as you have lived. Which is not very long, and will not be for much longer. After all, you are just a cog in the machine._

_“Oh,” you say._

_You should stop thinking now, says the man on the radio._

_But you are a boy who has been stolen and stolen from. This faceless, massive machine has stolen who you are and who you might have been. In another life, you may have had a family. You may have had thoughts, feelings, friends._

_In another life, you might be in a home right now, listening to the radio. You might have a mother cooking in the kitchen, a father come home from work laughing as he plays with your younger sibling. In another life, you might be out with friends, in a speeding car, the wild desert open to you, the wind in your face._

_In another life, you might not have blood on your helmet._

_In another life, you might feel._

_And here is this man from another life, a man from a world wild and free like that life you will never have. Here is a man from outside the Order, a man who fights against this strange machine that devours lives entire._

_This is a moral dilemma. There is only one course of action._

_Or so says the man on the radio._

* * *

__

_  
_

_  
_

“So either he’s somehow got into the head of a particularly rebellious Stormtrooper,” says Hux, as Phasma peels out of his driveway and onto the streets, “and for some reason elected to air his thoughts out onto the radio instead of reporting it to you—”

(Which is entirely within Kylo’s scope of abilities, given his Force-sensitivity, but makes no fucking sense since Kylo is generally re-educated within an inch of his life and loyal to Snoke to the point of reverence.)

(Except when he’s not, at which point he’s re-educated again.)

“Or he’s sparking a fucking rebellion again,” says Phasma, eyes narrowed, “the little _shit._ ”

“What if it’s just a story?” he asks, a little desperately, because _why is it never just a story goddammit._

“Can’t be. That team just took Dameron in,” she replies, shortly, “And the FN squadron is stationed there.” She pauses, and mutters, “ _and on my day off, too.”_

Hux freezes. _Dameron,_ he thinks, and his blood goes cold. “Fuck,” he says, flatly, “he’s here looking for _me.”_

“ _What?”_ Phasma yelps, and nearly slams them into a Force-Ghost crossing the road.

(Which most certainly does not exist, and therefore could not kill them anyway. It’s also transparent, which makes swerving wildly away from the glowing, disgruntled form highly unnecessary.)

 

 

* * *

  


  


Poe can’t help but groan in relief when the Troopers leave.

They’ve left him tied to a chair, which means his left arm is _fucking burning,_ and he’s got a headache from the shoving and jostling. He slumps back and tries frantically to think of a plan, though a part of him is pretty resigned to his fate.

(“Look, kid,” Han had said, wearily, “people who go in there tend to never come out. We thought it’d be different after Vader died, but. But it isn’t. You sure you’re up for this?”)

(He also thinks of how no one has heard of Brendol Hux in almost a year.)

He’s on the verge of attempting to dislocate his arms and squirm out of his bindings (it’s a plan in progress, okay!) when the door slides open and another Trooper marches in.

This one has a smear or blood streaked on the stark white of his helmet, which he immediately removes.

“Um,” says the Trooper, who is apparently a man, “I’m getting you out of here?”

“What,” says Poe.

  


* * *

 

 

_“You regret this. You do not regret this. You are terrified. You are euphoric. You have no idea what you’re doing. You know exactly what you’re doing. You are doing the right thing. You are betraying everything you have ever known,”_ says the man on the radio, as they drive out into the desert with the wind in their faces and the future bright and wild and uncertain before them.

 

(“Can you drive?” he had asked, as he marched the Outsider along as though he is meant to be doing this.

“Can I _drive?”_ the man grins, teeth flashing.

“Is that a yes?”

“…yeah.”)

 

(“WHAT’S YOUR NAME?” the man with the bright eyes had yelled as the officer-level jeep skidded out of the grounds and toward the empty stretch of sand, the noise of guns and blasters ringing out in the dead of the night.

“FN-2187!” he’d hollered back.

“FN-WHAT?” the man had shouted, as they sped wildly ahead, laughter in his voice, “CAN I CALL YOU FINN?”

“Finn,” he’d said, quietly, and it was lost in the cacophony of gunshots brought about by his betrayal, “YEAH. YEAH, FINN! I’M FINN!”

“NICE TO MEET YOU, FINN! I’M POE DAMERON!”)

 

_“You are free,”_ says the man on the radio, “ _and though you will bleed and scream and suffer and die, you have this. For now, in these fleeting moments in the dead of the desert night, in a stolen jeep with a stranger you just broke out of containment, with betrayal sitting heavy on your shoulders, you are free.”_

Poe looks at the radio, alarmed, “What the hell is that?”

“You get used to it,” says Finn.

 

* * *

 

_This is a story about you, says the man on the radio, and this is your story._

_You are FN-2187, you are Finn, and you have written your own story._

_This is more than most of us can say, says the man on the radio, who switches to the weather and waits to be re-educated. Again._

_  
_

* * *

**BONUS:**

“You need to stop doing this,” says Hux, quietly, as he holds onto the drowsy Kylo draped over him. The man is a fucking _monolith_ , radiating heat like a furnace, and Hux can barely hold him up.

Kylo laughs, and nuzzles into his neck, eyes glassy and unknowing, blank as the void. “I don’t remember my story,” he whispers, low and airy in Hux’s ear.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Hux, stroking his thick, dark curls, “you have me. You don’t need a story, because you’ll always have me.”

Kylo hums, and curls his fingers around the nape of his neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next update will come much faster, I promise. I'm sorry that this is short and not at all what I hoped it would be.
> 
> Up next: The Girl in the Orange Jacket.


	3. The Girl in the Orange Jacket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So a man sent to hijack a totalitarian government and a traitor who abandoned everything for a stranger met a scavenger without a face—in a sea of sand ruled by a creature who lives in the minds of everyone there, and from whom there is no real escape. This is a joke.
> 
> It’s funny.
> 
> Laugh, already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly: I posted this a day ago. Somehow, it got deleted. What the fuck, AO3. What the fuck.
> 
> Secondly: this is a motherfucking month late. I have no excuse--only that I'm weird and glitchy and I haven't been able to do anything and it takes an actual three hours to convince myself to get out of bed. On a good day. This is just nor my month.
> 
> Also, this grew a plot. Updates will come sooner, now that I've kicked my ass into moving.

_Don’t look in the mirror._

_It is only a reminder of everything you have lost, and everything that might have been. The reflection that stares back at you is dead-eyed and cold with a cold that has settled deep into your bones a long time ago. It’s also screaming, even though you’re not. And banging on the mirror, shouting words that you cannot hear in desperation. There is something dark and looming behind it, moving as though to swallow it whole with a mouth that seems as endless and dark as the void above us._

_Don’t look in the mirror,_ says the voice of Kylo Ren, softly, mournfully, _it probably isn’t important anyway._

* * *

 

So a man sent to hijack a totalitarian government and a traitor who abandoned everything for a stranger met a scavenger without a face—in a sea of sand ruled by a creature who lives in the minds of everyone there, and from whom there is no real escape. This is a joke.

It’s funny.

Laugh, already.

 

 

* * *

 

_“Well, listeners! Looks like we have someone new in town today!” s_ ays Kylo Ren, voice light and cheerful. _“A girl in an orange jacket has been sighted at various places today—oddly, no one can remember her face. They know that she is a she—or appears to resemble a she in the most physical sense, but could very well be a he or a they or a ze or a fae, or a genderless creature from a distant moon here to devour us all, or a lizard person carefully dressed in human skin...ah, I’m getting off track. There is a maybe-girl in an orange jacket walking around town, and no one can remember her face. Or anything else about her, really. Weird, isn’t it?”_

They are sitting in the jeep, air-conditioner turned to full blast and sprawled over one another lazily, Finn’s eyes drifting closed to the smooth cadence of Ren’s voice. It’s strange, to be tangled in someone else’s limbs, to feel someone else’s breath against his neck, to hold and be held in turn. It is strange and wild and new and vastly different from everything that came _before_ and Finn is terrified. But he lies there, tangled in two other someone else’s limbs, because it feels safe.

(It feels like home.)

He’s startled awake by the voice at his ear, muttering, “But I’m _not_ new in town!”

He pats Rey’s hair (it’s brown, he thinks, absently, and is very aware that he’ll forget that soon) and mumbles, “There there.” Poe murmurs a similar sentiment, and scratches his belly. Actually, he makes to scratch his belly, and scratches Rey’s arm instead.

_“—it is also suspected that she may be harboring the fugitives FN-2187 and Poe Dameron. Because that’s Dameron’s jacket, according to a trusted source with lovely red hair that looks like fire. There have been posters of the three put up around town—although the photograph for the Perhaps-Girl in the Orange Jacket is actually a frustrated scribble and an angry question mark left by the Trooper who was assigned to provide an artistic impression of her. And ‘Poe Dameron’ has been misspelled, so that it actually reads ‘Poo Dameron’.”_

“Are you—you have _got_ to be kidding me,” says Poe, voice thick from nearly falling asleep and glaring at the radio vehemently. “That’s just—what?”

Finn and Rey can’t help but burst into laughter, and Rey spits, “ _Poo Dameron!”_ before burying her face in Finn’s neck and snorting loudly.

 _“The fugitives are enemies of the Order, Supreme Leader Snoke and everything we stand for,” s_ ays Ren, brightly, _“and Phasma’s having another bad day, so all three of them are to be killed on sight! None of that ‘asking questions’ or ‘mercy’ business for us, nope. So, listeners, arm yourselves for a manhunt. There is no reward, but the blood of the Order’s enemies staining your hands should be reward enough…”_

And now they aren’t laughing anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

They met Rey the morning after their wild and probably-ill-advised escape.

She was a girl wandering the vast expanse of desert with a ratty shawl wrapped around her head and a bag of scrapmetal and tools strapped to her back. There was something ethereal and out-of-focus about her, and Finn recalls that he could not focus on her face. Even now he cannot tell you what she looks like.

They were sitting in the jeep, the traitor and the rebel, and startled as a girl who had no face rapped hard on their window.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked, frowning. Later, they will recall this conversation only vaguely, the imprints of what was perhaps-real.

“Um” said Poe, and smiled charmingly. Finn cannot remember what her face looked like, but he does remember her heavily unimpressed expression. “We…went joyriding?”

“That one’s wearing a Trooper uniform,” she pointed out.

“I’m going through a rebellious phase?” said Finn, which wasn’t a lie, exactly.

 

(Rey does not remember much, besides the vast, endless sea of sand and the cruel stretch of blue above. She can hardly remember her own name.)

 

“I’ll help you,” she said, after a silence.

“Help us what?”

 

(“The Force,” Rey said, “is like a living creature, but not. Not really. It’s like anything and everything in the universe, but connected. It’s the sea and the sky and the void and the drumbeat of our hearts, and it’s thrumming through all of us. Some of us can just manipulate it, sometimes. It whispers to us, tells us stories and shows us paths we can’t normally see.”

“…and that’s how you know that I’m a defected Trooper and that he’s an Outsider?”

“Exactly!”)

 

She offered to go into town and get them clothes and food, while Poe came up with a plan of action (though that plan’s just been blown out of the water). “No one remembers my face,” she said, in the matter-of-fact tone of one utterly used to being a ghost in the periphery of every eye she has ever encountered, “I’m sure most don’t even know I exist.”

Finn frowned, and said, “But why don’t you leave? If no one remembers you, why don’t you leave the Order—maybe it’s this place that’s making you like this.” Because Poe had told him stories of Outside and Beyond the Desert, and it sounds almost surreal. A world where portals do not appear out of thin air, without hooded Sith figures or Force ghosts or ancient primordial beings trying to steal your soul every other Thursday, or houses that disappear, or Voices on the radio chronicling everything that ever happens.

“It’s not the place,” Rey sighed, and shook her head, “I can’t remember much—only the really important things. But I know Snoke is doing this to me.” She was perched on the hood of the jeep, legs crossed and ratty backpack clutched to her front in a way that was oddly childlike.

Poe’s head jerked up from where he was fiddling with a communicator and trying to get a connection to the Vague Yet Menacing Government Agency that sent him here. “Because you’re a Force user?”

She nodded. “I think so,” she said, vaguely, like she was trying to grasp the fading wisp of a memory.

The conversation turned to Poe and Outside again, and it was a while before any of them were inclined to move. The sun bore down on them with its usual steady heat, but Finn did not want this to end. They, in this blinding desert far from anything, they with their stories and laughter. It’s strange and surreal and Finn is sure that he’ll wake up in his bunker to find that this is a bizarre dream, and be sent to re-education for creative thought.

“Here,” said Finn, shrugging off the orange jacket that Poe had been wearing, “wear this. That way, we’ll know it’s you.”

 

(“Here,” said Poe, when Finn had stripped of his Trooper armor once and for all and flung it into the sand with an air of triumph. “Wear this over your undershirt.”

It was warm from Poe and smelt vaguely of sweat, but it was perfect.)

 

Rey smiled like the desert sun, bright and warm, and said, “Thank you.

 

* * *

 

 

 _“You know what’s really concerning? Free will. That’s concerning,”_ says Kylo Ren, in the bubbly tone that he’s taken up for the entirety of today’s show, _“I mean, the concept of being left to do whatever we want is such a bad idea—it’d be anarchy! Imagine, being allowed to do whatever you want, to maintain a sense of individuality? To live out your own dreams, build your own lives and make your own choices? Who thought_ that _would be a good idea?”_

Poe stares at the radio, and says, flatly, “Is this guy for real?”

Finn shrugs, “That’s just how he is. He’s Snoke’s Voice—he’s what keeps us going.”

Poe turns to stare at him, “But how does he—he has a running commentary of our escape going! He nearly got us caught!”

Finn shrugs again. “Most people forget that reality exists when he’s talking—when the radio turns on, you stop and listen. You can’t help it.”

(Finn is not sure whether the _Story About You_ happened because he was defecting, or if he defected because of the S _tory About You._ He does not think on it too much, because he isn’t sure he wants to know.)

“Huh,” Poe huffs, and slumps back on the seat, fiddling with the air conditioning. “I suppose he does this with the Force?”

“Yeah,” says Finn.

Rey blinks slowly, and murmurs, “He sounds familiar.”

“Uh, yeah,” says Finn, scratching at the back of his neck, “he’s always on the radio.”

“— _and Brendol tells me that there is, indeed, a world where people actually choose their leaders, instead of being ruled by a strange and mysterious being who whispers of dominating the world and destroying all free will and opposition. That’s just weird.”_

Poe flutters his hands and jerks forward, “What—wait, wait wait!” he gestures to the radio, “What was that?”

“What?”

“That—Brendol, who’s Brendol?” he turns around from where he’s nestled into the front seat, surrounded by parts that Rey had scavenged for the communicator he’s trying to build.

Finn blinks, and says, “Brendol Hux? He’s Kylo’s boyfriend—”

“Oh my fucking God,” Poe’s eyes go wide, and he exhales sharply, pressing his hands to his face. “ _He—_ he isn’t _dead?”_

_“What?”_

* * *

 

_This is your daily reminder that you are completely inconsequential and that you are, in fact, nothing but a pawn for a far greater cause. You are nothing._

_It doesn’t matter who you were, or who you think you might be. You are nothing. Don’t listen to your reflection, screaming at you to get away. Don’t listen to the soft voice of a woman that whispers in your head at night, telling you to come home. You belong here, and you are nothing, and that is how it is._

_Forget who you might have been, s_ ays the man on the radio, low and mournful, _you don’t have a story. You are nothing._

_…and now, the weather._

* * *

 

Han nearly fucking cries when Dameron makes contact.

“Kid,” he hisses into the commlink in relief, shoving the aside any poor bastards that got in his way, “kid, are you alright? What the fuck happened?”

The voice that crackles on the line is choppy and unclear, but Han can hear him just fine. He’d been terrified that they’d sent the kid into his death.

“ _I’m fine, I’m fine!”_ says Dameron, “ _they took me in but I escaped—with a Trooper.”_

Han blinks in surprise, and everyone else milling about in the Ops booth freezes, too. “What?” he says, tentatively.

 _“Hi,”_ says another voice, from the comm. “ _I’m Finn.”_

Han shakes himself. “I’m not even gonna ask,” he says, resigned.

 

( _WAIT, s_ ays his common sense, _THIS IS A TROOPER? WHAT IF THIS IS A TRAP?_

 _Shut up,_ he tells his common sense. _But, yeah, you have a point._ )

 

“A Trooper, kid? How do you know you can trust him?”

“ _He risked everything to get me out, Han! We keep getting shot at,” s_ ays Poe.

“ _That’s because you tried to march into town and get Phasma to change your poster when there was an order to shoot on sight put on our heads, Poe.”_

Han does not want to know. He rubs his face. “Right, just. Just stay put,” he says, “I’m coming in to get you out.”

“ _Wait! There’s something else.”_

“What?”

“ _Yeah, Hux? The scientist? They’ve done some kind of mind-control thing on him—he thinks he’s in love with the radio guy, I think. We need to get him out, Han. That radio guy is really fucking creepy.”_

The…radio guy? Han groans. “Are you kidding me?” he mutters, and sighs. “Fine. We’ll get Hux, too. Just stay put, wherever you’re hiding. And send me your location.”

“ _Sir, yes, sir!”_

Han just _knows_ he’s going to regret this.

 

* * *

 

“Come with us,” says Poe, again, with wide brown eyes.

He and Finn look at her intensely, as though it is _important_ that she come along. As though _she_ is important.

She wants to. She wants this warmth, she wants the weight of the orange jacket on her shoulders, she wants the laughter and she wants to keep being _seen._ They see her, (not really, but) they talk to her, they act as though she is _there._ And she wants that open, wide world away from the endless stretch of desert that she cannot escape, the world where she might be a person.

(She might be a person, with memories and a life and friends and likes and wants and a home and oh how she wants but)

(but)

“I can’t,” she sighs, shaking her head, slowly, “Not without Ben.”

 

* * *

 

**BONUS:**

_“Come home,”_ she whispers in his ear, “c _ome home to me. Come home, my son, come home come home come home come home—”_

Kylo Ren squeezes his eyes shut and grunts, pressing his face into Hux’s neck. Hux blinks sleepily, and rubs at his head, murmuring something that Kylo can’t hear because of the other voice hissing in his head.

 _NO,_ says the dark thing, _NO NO YOU BELONG HERE IN THE DESERT YOU BELONG HERE IN THIS SANCTUARY HERE YOU ARE SAFE HERE YOU ARE LOVED HERE YOU BELONG HERE_

“ _Please,”_ the woman says, trying to speak over the deep, rumbling bass of the dark thing that lives in everyone in the Order, that watches every movement and is telling Kylo Ren that he is safe. “ _Please, I can’t hold on to the connection much longer. You have to listen, please, try to—”_

_DON’T LISTEN DON’T THINK YOU ARE SAFE THEY WILL TAKE YOU AWAY YOU DON’T WANT TO BE TAKEN AWAY STOP THINKING EMBRACE THE DARK EMBRACE THE VOID THERE YOU ARE SAFE THERE YOU ARE—_

Kylo jerks back, out of the warmth of Hux’s embrace and sits up, eyes wide in the pitch black of his(their) room. There is no light from outside, but for the streaks of light that shoot across the night sky, unknown travelers through the vast and interminable void that they cannot explain.

(Who the fuck is Ben?)

Kylo feels Hux rub at his arm, and ask, “Kylo? Is it the voices again?”

“Yeah,” he sighs.

“Just ignore them,” says Hux, pulling him back down.

_“No! No, Ben, please! Listen to me, tell me where you are—”_

_SAFE,_ screams the dark thing.

“Talk to me,” says Kylo, loud enough that he doesn’t hear either of the voices in his head.

And Hux does—about his new findings, the way he is slowly and methodologically making sense of the scattered sort of chaos that makes up the First Order, with his baffling but brilliant Science. Kylo hums under his breath, and the both of them manage to keep the warring voices somewhat at bay.

_“Please, Ben, come home—”_

~~(Mom no I can’t—)~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up Next: Ben Solo is Not Dead


	4. Ben Solo is Not Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Due to the difficulty in locating the fugitives Dameron and FN-2187, she’s decided to organize an angry mob—so grab your pitchforks and guns, listeners. Arm yourselves with violence and weapons and hatred of the unknown, and whet your bloodlust. It will be held tomorrow morning, right after the First Order Townwide Children’s Monthly Grudge Matches are concluded._
> 
> _Take your children with you, to teach them what becomes of those who dare stray from the path ordained from them. Overall, it’s bound to be a great time for the whole family!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly have no excuse for taking so long.
> 
> But, life happened? And I started writing this as an escape from stress, but thing built up and I sort of lost all inspiration for it. But I really love this AU, and i recently got some of my funk back so I thought I'd give this another shot.
> 
> I honestly think I've lost the ability to write tho. So bear with me?
> 
> So here we return: Ben isn't dead and Han is confused.

 

 _Dear listeners,_ says the man on the radio, _here is a secret._

_You are a miniscule speck of a being, living a tiny, unimportant life that will flicker out before it becomes important. You are trivial, a nothing that the skies do not care about, living and breathing and laughing and working and fighting and bleeding for nothing._

_The gods don’t care about you, listeners._

_You are destined to be an empty, hollow shell of what you might have become, were you anything but what you are. You are a little thing that pretends that the life you live means something, that_ you _mean something._

_We are all pretending, listeners, to mean something._

* * *

 

 

Once upon a time, Han Solo did not give a fuck.

Once, he was a cocky little kid running supplies to a desert town steeped in something dark that no one heard of. He didn’t care about the Empire, or the little collection of cities outside the desert that called itself the Republic. Or the badlands in between. Han Solo had once only cared about himself, the beat up  old car he called _The Millenium Falcon_ and his buddy Chewie.

Then he met a farmboy who carried a message from some daughter of a governor who was also some kind of Resistance leader working against the Imperials, and that kind of went to hell.

 

Once upon a time, a cocky smuggler met a boy with eyes like the sky who could rend apart buildings with his mind, and read the thoughts from someone’s head.

He met a girl who commanded a ragtag army, long hair pulled into braids and took a bullet to the thigh and kept fighting.

A smuggler, a farmboy, and a girl who never once admitted she was out of her depth. They brought down an Empire, the three of them.

 

 _I love you,_ the girl with eyes that burned like a forest fire told him, when they were both sure they’d die. Chased across the desert by a maniac that turned out to be her father, clothes dusted in sand and blood, faces ashen. _I love you, s_ he said, because she was afraid she’d never get the chance to otherwise.

 _I know,_ he told her, looking her square in the eyes, because he did. It was inevitable, this burning, aching thing he’d built in his chest. Held it close, like a candle he was shielding from a sandstorm.

 

Once, Han Solo did not give a fuck, but that was before he held his son in his hands. Ben, little Ben who had his mother’s eyes and a smile like the sun. Little Ben, who learned how to make things fly before he talked, who asked Han for stories and knew what was going to happen before he told them, who braided Chewie’s beard and giggled when he fell instead of crying like a _normal_ kid.

Ben, little Ben, who he _lost_.

 

Once upon a time, a war and a political takeover and a fatherhood ago, Han Solo did not give a fuck.

Now, though, he is old and weary and has scars all over him. Now, he has lost years of his life and a son who had his mother’s eyes, and he is tired.

 

(And he still has _so much to lose_.)

 

* * *

 

The night before Han sets off for the Order in a rusty old car he’d stolen as a boy, Leia comes running into his room.

Her hair is in disarray, braid falling apart around her head, and she looks like a wreck. Her eyes (still as bright as they were so long ago, but older, s _o much older_ ) are puffy and red, and there are tears drying on her face. She pretty much knocks the door down, and stands there for a few moments, chest heaving.

Han stares at her from where he is cleaning his shoes, hands frozen.

 

(Once upon a time, Han and Leia slept in the same room. They would wind around one another like they were afraid something would take them away in the night, even though Leia kicked and Han snored. Han would wake up wither hair in his face, a few strands in his mouth, but they never got out of the habit.

But that was a lifetime ago, a _son_ ago,)

 

“Leia? Did—did something happen?”

She looks lost, adrift, and he hasn’t seen her like this in years. She looks at him, square in the eyes with something burning inside, and says, “ _Ben_. Han, I’ve found him.”

“What the— _how? Where?_ ”

“I heard him,” she chokes out, tears spilling over. Han wants to go hold her, stop her from shaking like she’s falling apart but he’s frozen. Brain stalled, sputtering, caught on _Ben Ben Ben Ben my son my Ben_

“The Order,” she says, and Han Solo feels something in him crack open, “the Order, they have him, I think they’re using him as a Voice—”

“I’ll get him back,” he says, automatically, even though he’s reeling. He gets up, stumbles over to her and she all but collapses when he wraps his arms around her. He can’t tell which one of them is shaking more.

“I’ll get him back,” he says.

 

(Once upon a time, Han Solo did not give a fuck. But that was a war ago, and now he gives a fuck enough to _rip apart_ anyone that got between him and his boy.)

 

* * *

 

 

Han and Chewie are silent as they drive across the desert.

 

(“The cub’s alive?” Chewie had choked out in disbelief when Han told him, that morning. “ _Gods,_ the cub’s alive?”

And that is when Han stopped pretending and broke down into ugly, ugly sobs.)

 

The radio crackles to life as soon as they hit Order territory. It’s playing some kind of music, and Han frowns. It sounded like some kind of Dutch rap.

They’ve been driving within Order borders for exactly three minutes when the song ends, and a low voice takes over.

“ _Welcome back, listeners!”_ says the man on the radio, blithely, “ _We have some exciting news for you, courtesy of Captain Phasma of the Secret Stormtroopers! Due to the difficulty in locating the fugitives Dameron and FN-2187, she’s decided to organize an angry mob—so grab your pitchforks and guns, listeners. Arm yourselves with violence and weapons and hatred of the unknown, and whet your bloodlust. It will be held tomorrow morning, right after the First Order Townwide Children’s Monthly Grudge Matches are concluded._

_Take your children with you, to teach them what becomes of those who dare stray from the path ordained from them. Overall, it’s bound to be a great time for the whole family!”_

Han stares at the radio, feeling several things at once. That—that was _Ben?_

“ _I would love to join you,”_ the voice that was meant to be Ben’s says, tone slightly less enthusiastic, _“But if I am out there, hunting down wild fugitives who dare speak of thing we are not allowed to imagine, who will stay here, talk so sweetly to you over the radio?_

_That, and Bren tells me that I am not to be trusted with a gun or a pointy thing ever in my life, because I am a danger to both myself and the universe at large. Which, I think, is both rude and untrue.”_

“That’s Ben?” asks Chewie.

“Leia thinks so,” says Han.

There’s something really wrong about this—Han can’t tell what, however.

“ _Also, a reminder: if you have been feeling as though you are experiencing free will, or the sudden urge to take control of your own life, please report to the nearest ‘Trooper station so that you can be re-educated. The symptoms of free will include—”_

This is—this is a _bsurd._ People don’t actually believe this shit, do they? Because even the Empire has never been this blatant about their brainwashing, it’s almost like this radio guy is trying to—

“Oh,” says Han, frowning, “Oh, _shit_. That’s Ben, alright.”

Chewie looks confused. Han doesn’t blame him.

“— _and now I have to turn myself in for my own mandatory re-education!_ ” says Ben, brightly. He sounds satisfied, now that Han thinks about it. Smug little shit, he thinks fondly, and his heart feels like it’s cracking open. “ _So that concludes our show for today—with the ever-present reminder that none among us are truly safe. None of us really matter. And with that, my listeners, I bid you good night._ ”

Then it sinks in—“Fuck,” he says, eyes widening, “a mob? Really, _a mob?_ We need to find Dameron, fast, switch on the comm!”

 

* * *

 

 

“Ben?” says Poe Dameron, bewildered. “No—that’s impossible, they can’t—”

“It’s true,” says Han. “I’ve—I’ve heard him, I know my son, Poe, and that was him.”

(Han thinks that, after years of living with Leia and Luke, he might have a bit of the Force, too. Because he has never been surer of anything in his life.)

The other kid, the ‘Trooper with bright eyes that proudly introduced himself as _Finn,_ looks at them all oddly, “Wait, you mean Kylo Ren? The Voice?”

“Yeah,” says Han, tiredly, “he’s my son.”

They’re all standing around in the freezing cold—lit only by the headlights of the Falcon, and the strange, unearthly lights that streak across the night sky like ghosts. In the distance, the girl ~~whose face Han can’t seem to remember or even focus on~~ is setting up a fire.

“And his name is Ben,” says Finn, dubiously. He leans against the First Order issue jeep that they claim to have escaped in, frowning. “That’s weird. Is this the same Ben that Rey’s looking for?”

Both Chewie and Han turn to stare at him because _what the fuck._

“Rey?” Han sputters. “ _Rey?_ ”

The boys point at the hunched-over figure working away at a fire, eyes intense. They look confused.

They look more confused when Han makes a strangled noise and _runs right at her,_ smothering her.

(or, he tries to, and get punched squarely in the nose)

 

* * *

 

 

**BONUS:**

Kylo Ren hasn’t cried like this in years.

The re-education was standard—nothing too bad, nothing different from what he gets whenever he shoots his mouth off—and he was delivered shakily home by eleven o’ clock, by which time Bren had already made dinner. Sweet, lovely Bren, who took one look at him and went ashen because.

Well, because Kylo couldn’t stop crying.

He’s been sobbing and snotting and retching for hours, and poor Bren appears to be at his wits’ end. Kylo doesn’t even feel sad—no more than he usually does, no more than he is allowed—and this makes very little sense.

( _come home come home come home come home, s_ ays a voice in his head, and Kylo pretends he cannot hear)

“What’s wrong, love?’ asks Bren, holding him as he heaves and screams out anguish into his hands. “What wrong? Tell me, did someone hurt you? What happened—”

This _doesn’t make sense._ Kylo feels oddly detached, as though he’s watching himself fall apart from a distance. He doesn’t feel the pain that he’s wailing out. Not really.

~~Probably because he isn’t allowed to feel it.~~

But he cries and cries and sobs and sniffles and gags with the force of it relentlessly, until he calms down sometime around 4 am.

By this time, Bren is almost a bad a mess as he, looking lost and helpless.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong now, darling?” he asks softly, carding his fingers though Kylo’s sweaty hair.

“Nothing,” he rasps out, feeling empty. His voice is small and whispery and miserable from a night screaming into Bren’s chest. “Nothing is wrong.”

Bren pauses, and looks down at Kylo where he’s pillowed his head on his lap. “You don’t have to tell me, Kylo, but you can’t expect me to believe—”

“I don’t think that was me crying,” he says, “I think—I think those were Ben Solo’s tears.”

Bren’s hand goes very still.

“Kylo— _who the fuck is Ben Solo?_ ”

“Not dead, apparently,” says Kylo Ren, wonderingly, “which is pretty weird.”

 

 

 

  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up Next: Everyone Loves a Good Old Fashioned Angry Mob


End file.
